My name is Shira Rosenak, a Bronfman Fellow from 2010. I appreciate the opportunity to write a little bit and share what is going on in these times. October 7th shook our very foundations. Banal terms received a new, frightening, threatening meaning: Home. Family. Holiday. Morning. A heavy shadow hovers over everything. Not just terms Continue Reading »
Hi! My name is Itai Ohel Gallili, and I’m a 17-year-old from Jerusalem. I feel distant from the present situation specifically here in Jerusalem, the city in which the “situation” is volatile even when we aren’t at war. Too distant. There are almost no sirens here, even though there are sirens on an almost daily Continue Reading »
Like many young Israelis, after my army service, I flew off to fulfill my dream of a big trip to the East: a period of searching for meaning, self-discovery, and simply vacation and adventure after a period of intense military service. The trip took an unexpected about-face when the war erupted. It was clear to Continue Reading »
Having been asked to write this, it’s the first time that I’m looking at the past month and a half as a series of separate incidents, and not as one, long, continuous account. It feels either like just one day or my entire life, but there are distinct moments within it. There is the moment Continue Reading »
I began on that emotional Friday at my pre-military preparatory program, the secular yeshiva Bina, which is located in south Tel Aviv. It was nothing less than an amazing Friday. We prepared for Shabbat and celebrated Simchat Torah that evening in a Reform synagogue in Tel Aviv. People say that for many Israelis, that Friday Continue Reading »
When everything started, I was in Morocco with my family on a trip that had been planned long ago. We had big plans to travel. We were supposed to finish the trip in Marrakesh, visiting my great-grandmother’s grave there, as well as the Jewish neighborhood where my grandparents grew up. On the morning when everything Continue Reading »
If you ask me how I am now, then, in all likelihood, I’ll answer, “Fine” in an optimistic manner, quietly and tersely, and I’ll pull my shoulders up. But the truth is that nothing is fine. For a month now, I’ve been raising my son Kedem alone, because my partner is at the Lebanon border. Continue Reading »
I’m Shir Achdut, 19 years old, in my second year of preparatory studies before I’m inducted into the army. In the past four weeks, I’ve been volunteering anywhere I can, and there’s a sense of dynamism in the air. We heard that there’s a hotel in Netanya that evacuees from the Gaza Envelope arrived at Continue Reading »
A month has passed since October 7, but it feels like much longer. On the other hand, I feel like only a moment has passed—the days are jumbled together into a blurry stain. And despite that, after a month, a kind of emergency routine begins: We make plans, knowing that any moment they might change—because Continue Reading »
I closed my eyes and I remembered that on Friday, the day before the very nature of our lives changed, we went to the beach. After a week of nights that weren’t nights, I closed my eyes and I remembered us at the beach. I remembered the feeling of slick shards of seashells on the Continue Reading »